Every week hundreds of articles and books are published that are all about how company X or CEO Y created their company culture. Trying to emulate the steps of other managers isn’t the best recipe for success.

Company founders establish the culture they want from the first day they begin working together. However, older companies should understand how to instil and maintain their values in their company even if they have been in business for years.

To make things more transparent, let’s examine company culture and define what it is and how it affects your employees, and what their role is in culture creation and sustainment.

Here Is What Company Culture Is Not

Culture is not ping pong tables, free lunches, nerf gun wars, or “crazy hat Tuesday.” Those are all fun, but they are the signs of a business’ culture. They aren’t the culture.

Culture is not placing”Work Hard Play Hard” posters up around an office. That saying might describe a culture, but it doesn’t determine it.

Too many times, we look at the fringe benefits of a great company culture and mistakenly think that is the culture. They aren’t. They are the result of a culture.

What Defines And Creates Your Company’s Culture

Your company’s core values and mission statement are what define your company culture.

What drives your company’s culture is your employee’s adherence to those core values and the direction they get from your mission statement.

You get your employees to adhere to the statement by getting them engaged with your company on a daily basis. How do you do that? Well, there have been numerous studies, and surveys conducted over the years that asked employees what made them feel most engaged with their company. Here are some things to consider to use to build employee engagement.

• Frank and open communication between employees and all managers. Employees should feel free to speak with any manager, even it if they aren’t from the same department.

• Constructive, consistent and relevant feedback

• Make sure employees are given challenging work. Meaningful work motivates employees and draws them into the company mission.

• Encourage, support, and reward employees who improve their education. No company ever suffered because people “knew too much.”

• Establish a career path for employees. A well-defined path for advancement is motivating and helps the employees know where they are in their career

• For every project, ensure people understand their duties, and they have clear markers to signal when they have achieved a goal.

Creating a great company culture isn’t something you do with a few changes in one area. You build it by making sure all the other facets of your company are in order. Besides employee engagement, make sure you have good core values, a distinct mission statement, excellent communication, and tasks that are well-defined and measurable.

At Equal Parts Consulting we help companies build cultures that are unique to their situation. Together, we create an atmosphere conducive to a company’s growth. This topic is essential, if you would like to discuss how we can help your business we invite you to contact us.